1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to wireless communications and, in particular, to a method and apparatus for establishing a Radio Resource Control (RRC) connection between a base station and a mobile station in a wireless communication system.
2. Background Art
Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is one of the third generation (3G) mobile telecommunication technologies, which is evolved from Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) and General Packet Radio Services (GPRS) and uses Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA).
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), which is responsible for the standardization of UMTS, is working on to significantly extend the performance of UMTS in the work item Long Term Evolution (LTE). The objective of the next generation communication systems is to support high quality packet data services.
In LTE, Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) and Hybrid ARQ (HARQ) are used to provide error correction functionality. The HARQ function checks the errors in the received packets and, if any error is detected, requests the transmitter for retransmission of corresponding packet. At this time, the receiver performs soft-combining to reduce the error occurrence probability. The ARQ function detects any missing packet and requests the transmitter for retransmission of the missing packet. That is, when the packet loss occurs while a base station is transmitting packets to a mobile station, the lost packet can be recovered by means of the ARQ and HARQ functions of the system.